Tom Flynn

Tom Flynn is a secular humanist activist, author of the 1993 polemic The Trouble with Christmas, and the longtime editor of Free Inquiry magazine. He founded the newsletter Secular Humanist Bulletin and edited the 2007 reference work The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. He is the author of three science-fiction novels: Messiah Games, Nothing Sacred, and Behold, He Said. Though some reviewers assume he’s an angry ex-Mormon, Flynn insists that no, he’s an angry ex-Catholic; everything he knows about the Mormon phenomenon he learned from books.
Flynn lives in the Buffalo, New York, area with his wife Susan (which explains a lot about the name that keeps showing up in the dedications of his works).

Titles Available from Tom Flynn

In 2344, Terra is the most backward planet ever granted membership in the Galactic Confetory. It has two exports: the consumingly immersive medium called “senso” … and Earth religions, which jaded Galactics just can’t get enough of.

From the planet Vatican, Roman Catholicism teaches that God sends his Son to world after world. The Church levies vast fees to reveal which of each world’s historical religious figures (if any) truly Incarnated the Cosmic Christ.

Then a famed mathematician calculates where God will send his son next … a ruined planet where most offworlders are forbidden.

A lascivious Cardinal … a bumbling Mormon trideevangelist … a vengeful planetary mining magnate … everyone wants a piece of the newest Christ. Never mind that the man himself is a conscious fraud who can’t control his closest followers.

This sequel to Flynn’s acclaimed Messiah Games continues in a future civilization that’s obsessed with religion, yet furious at Terra (Earth) for giving rise to the most popular creeds of all.

Terra may be the planet where humanity originated, but sophisticated Galactics treat it like a dismal step-child. “On the planet where humanity rose,” a popular saying goes, “it hasn’t risen far.”

Few Terrans seek their fortunes among the stars. Those who try face patronizing discrimination. Into this Galactic crucible leaps Earth-boy Gram Enoda alongside an impossibly intelligent vibrionic sidekick: his secret weapon and the bane of his existence. Enoda just wants to get rich. Instead he stumbles into a top-secret, half-baked plan to (yes, literally) save the Galaxy. Along the way he must confront a crackpot Mormon trideevangelist and a seductive preacher of nihilism.

To unravel a puzzle that imperils civilization, the Galaxy’s only self-aware computer and its enigmatic human handler must be enticed to abandon their prison planet. Only Computer (yes, that’s its name) can solve the puzzle: Why did all humans in the Galaxy, in one searing moment, get back all their missing socks?

Speaking of prisons, on the hell-world Bohrkk a mysterious energy spike destroys a sprawling punitorium. The only survivors: Mormon trideevangelist Alrue Latier, his plural wives, and a reluctant documentarian. To survive, they must con the native tribespeople they encounter on a breathtaking scale. (Latier doesn’t mind.)

The missing-socks mystery opens the path toward unimaginably larger mysteries, touching even the domain of lint theory. As this tour de farce concludes, will the reclusive Computer and Alrue Latier, now a self-made dictator, recognize that they need each other … before a mushrooming cult inspired by twentieth-century priest-philosopher Teilhard de Chardin overwhelms their gimcrack scheme to save the Galaxy?